Download here. - Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

"The program provides a community of like-minded colleagues and superiors"
Current Brown Scholars
C. Lauren Arnold
Lauren Arnold hails from Memphis, TN, where she first became interested in social justice and community development.
She double-majored in Comparative Literature and Society and Hispanic Studies at Columbia before serving in the Peace
Corps in Cambodia. During her service, she became increasingly invested in community health and health education.
Upon returning to the States, she completed the Bryn Mawr Postbac Premed Program, and worked for a year as a health
educator in Philadelphia public schools before starting medical school at P&S. She enjoys cooking, hip-hop, language
learning, and exploring newness of all forms. She would like to do a research project focusing on the quality of in-person
interpreter services versus phone interpreter services for patients in our community.
Lois Bangiolo
Lois Bangiolo is a second year medical student from Gaithersburg, MD. She graduated from Smith College with a degree
in Biology. She is involved in the Apoyo program, started last year by a fellow Brown Scholar, the Lang Youth Program,
the Health Policy Club, and Ultrasounds: CUMC’s a cappella group. She is currently working on a research project
investigating the prevalence of chlamydia amongst teenagers in rural, upstate New York.
Zoe Becker
Zoe is from Maplewood, New Jersey, and graduated from Haverford College in 2012. Pre-med but with a major in East
Asian Studies focusing on China, she has long been interested in the intersections between health, culture, language,
and social justice. After college, she spent 3 months in Nicaragua working with a training program for traditional
midwives before embarking on a year-long fellowship with an HIV/AIDS organization in Hyderabad, India. She then
taught 6th grade math at an inner city charter school in New Jersey before beginning medical school in the fall of 2014.
Now involved in the CHHMP student-run clinic at P&S, Zoe is excited to continue working with and for underserved
communities throughout her education and career.
Melissa Chiang
Melissa is from Freehold, New Jersey, and graduated from Columbia University in 2014, where she majored in
Neuroscience and Behavior. For three years during college, Melissa volunteered at Harlem Hospital with Health Leads, a
national non-profit that seeks to make addressing patients’ basic resource needs a standard part of quality healthcare.
This experience deepened her interest in community health and her understanding of the biopsychosocial model of
healthcare. At P&S, Melissa is involved at the CHHMP student-run clinic and hopes to continue to learn about health
disparities and to advocate for underserved populations.
Natalie Diacovo
Natalie graduated from Brown University in 2014, where she majored in Neuroscience. Her passion for primary care
stemmed from her undergraduate work with Health Leads, where she worked alongside physicians in a pediatric clinic to
connect underserved community members with resources to promote their improved health. Before matriculating to
P&S, she worked for an ACO, an organization founded under the Affordable Care Act which sought to improve care
quality and decrease care costs for Medicare patients. She looks forward to continuing to pursue her interests in areas
of intersection between clinical care, public health, and the humanities, as well as patient advocacy and quality care
improvement through the Brown Scholars.
Koryalys Edwards
Koryalys Edwards is a first year medical student from Queens, New York. She graduated from Columbia University in
2015 with a degree in Neuroscience and Behavior. While in college, she worked with the Lang Youth Program as an
advisor to underserved youth interested in medicine. Koryalys is excited to continue her work with this population as an
SPREP preceptor. As a CoSMO volunteer, she is also interested in working with underserved communities and plans to
continue her involvement throughout her career.
Erin Elbel
Erin Elbel is an Air Force brat and grew up in Montana, New Mexico, and Germany before attending the University of
Texas – Austin, where she studied neurobiology and public health. After graduating, she worked in healthcare
consulting for two years, traveling around the country to assist hospitals in addressing issues of multidisciplinary
communication, patient flow, and patient satisfaction. She enjoys competitive taekwondo and exploring NYC, and is
interested in the intersection between pediatrics, nutrition, and neuroscience.
Ariel Franks
Ariel was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from Yale with a degree in Sociology in 2010. Ariel moved
to NYC to dance (and waitress) for two years before entering medical school. Currently Ariel is interested in Family
Medicine, but she is keeping an open mind. For her scholarly project she is interested in getting patients' perspectives
on compliance with medications and their views on what makes a successful patient-clinician interaction. In her free
time she volunteers at the student run CUHRON clinic and continues to dance.
Mytra Haerizadeh
Mytra Haerizadeh grew up in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated from Columbia University in 2013. Her volunteer
experiences at New York-Presbyterian Hospital inspired her to complete a major in Hispanic Studies to better serve her
future patients. After graduation, she worked at Weill Cornell Medical College as a research assistant and patient
coordinator in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her research efforts focused on the bioethics of egg
donation and reproductive technologies. She is very interested in women’s health, public health, and primary care. In
her free time, Mytra enjoys running, volunteering at CoSMO (a student-run clinic), and exploring New York City.
David Hankins
David Hankins is a second year student at P&S. He grew up in Minneapolis, MN and graduated from Dartmouth College
in 2005. From 2005 to 2007, David worked as Assistant Director of Admissions at Dartmouth College, and from 2007 to
2009, he was a special education teacher in Las Vegas with Teach for America before starting the post-bac premed
program at Harvard. His time working in education was focused on underserved communities, which gave him a new
perspective on health care disparities in our country, which in turn helped spur his decision to attend medical school.
The Brown Scholars was a great fit for his interests and passions. While he has many different research project ideas at
this time, one project he is considering would examine primary care visit adherence among HIV-positive men who have
sex with men, and could potentially pilot an intervention based on existing research.
Athena Huang
Athena grew up in Holmdel, New Jersey and graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a degree in
biology. She has always enjoyed working with programs that emphasize education and community outreach.
At P&S, Athena is involved in APOYO and Bloom, both of which are mentoring programs for teenage girls, and
is a health educator at CoSMO clinic. While Athena is interested in OB/GYN and family medicine, she loves
exploring other options. She will be conducting qualitative research analysis to promote women’s
reproductive rights in the Dominican Republic during her summer after first-year. Her other interests include
music, art, and visiting hidden gems around NYC.
Giselle Jaconia
The daughter of a neonatologist and a physical chemist in Spokane, Washington, Giselle veered away from the sciences
at an early age, gravitating instead toward a career in the arts. After completing her dance training at the San Francisco
Ballet School, she enjoyed an eleven-year professional ballet career, performing and touring with companies in the
United States, Canada, and Germany. Following her retirement in 2009, Giselle returned to her roots, earning a
bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior at Columbia University and conducting research in cognitive psychology.
Meanwhile, she discovered an enthusiasm for community-based medicine through her volunteer work with patients
infected with HIV in Costa Rica and with a medical team in Guatemala. She is currently in her first year of medical school
and delighted to be joining the Brown Scholar community.
Rebecca Lichtin
Rebecca is a first year medical student from Highlands Ranch, CO. She graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a
degree in Neuroscience. After college, she spent a year working as a medical scribe at a community health center in
Boston, where she discovered her interest in primary care. Rebecca is involved in Bard Hall Players, a leader of the
Family Medicine Interest Group, and a part of Q Clinic, P&S’s newest student-run clinic focused on serving LGBTQI
homeless youth.
Logan Mauney
Logan is a first year medical student who grew up in Tucson, AZ before heading east to attend the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating with a degree in Economics, he took a year to perform public health and
nutrition research and work on his Portuguese at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Since making his way to P&S, he
has enjoyed performing in the Bard Hall Players, cooking with a supper club that he helped start with other food-crazed
students, and getting to know the city. As Logan considers a future in pediatrics, he looks forward to pursuing his
interest in languages and nutrition and their effect on patient-clinician communication.
Martha Muña
Martha grew up in Albuqerque, New Mexico and attended Stanford University, graduating with a degree in Human
Biology in 2013. Before attending P&S, she lead Kaeme, a non-profit, that partnered with the Department of Social
Welfare in Ghana to reform the Ghanaian orphanage system. Her experiences growing up in a medically underserved
state and in a family that suffers from diabetes, inspired her to pursue a career in medicine working with vulnerable
populations.
Nick Rozon
Nick is a first year medical student who was born and raised right here in New York City. He studied economics at
Columbia and graduated in 2008. After college Nick worked in television production at 20th Century Fox and taught
English to college freshman in Vietnam. Those experiences lead Nick to return to Columbia and enter post-bac premed
program. After completing the post-bacc program Nick worked as an assistant teacher in the wood shop at a grade
school in the Fall of 2012. He then moved to Guatemala where he studied Spanish and volunteered at a rural health
clinic.
Anoushka Sinha
Anoushka was born in Mumbai, India, spent her early childhood in Lagos, Nigeria, and grew up in Houston, Texas, before
desperately seeking snowfall in Vermont. She attended Middlebury College, graduating in 2013 with a joint major in
Spanish, English & American Literatures and a minor in Biology, then made her way to New York City, where she
completed a master’s degree in Narrative Medicine at Columbia. She spent the past year working in arts programs for
people with Alzheimer’s disease and cancer before undertaking a Narrative Medicine Fellowship focused on palliative
care in Mumbai. At P&S she participated in the Dígame Bienvenidos Pre-Orientation Program and is excited to be
involved in Dígame Más, CHHMP, and the Asylum Clinic. She plans to continue honing her interests in the arts and
humanities as they relate to medicine over the course of her education.
Amit Suneja
Amit is from Houston, TX - where he was raised, went to college, and spent a year teaching middle school before coming
to Columbia. During college, he spent 2 months teaching students and working at a pediatric HIV clinic in Maseru,
Lesotho, as well as studied abroad in Brazil, Vietnam, and South Africa. Though he developed a strong interest in global
health early on in college, he was also greatly interested in what he could do in his own community. Those interests led
him to work with refugees attending middle school in Houston, with whom he started a mentoring and tutoring
program. Ultimately, he chose to carry that interest through by taking a year off to teach middle school in Houston.
Now, he is more passionate than ever about doing what is needed in the arena of health care, policy, and research to
improve communities in the United States and working with the people in those communities so they get what they
need.
Rebecca Tsevat
Rebecca grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in
English Literature and Biology and minored in Spanish. After graduating from college, she completed a master’s degree
in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. Rebecca is currently a first year medical student at P&S and is involved in
the Columbia Medical Review, the Reflexions Art and Literary Magazine, the health education program at CoSMO, and
the Lang Youth Program. In the future, she hopes to situate her work at the intersections of medicine, public health, and
the humanities, and in her free time, she enjoys reading, running, and traveling.